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Along with the vulgar-materialistic understanding of the formula «being determines consciousness» that prevails everywhere in the left movement, certain “understandings” also arise with the doctrine of matter, space, and time. We must admit that Einsteinianism has revised the fundamental categories of being not only in physics and bourgeois philosophy, but also in the worldview of the modern left, which position themselves as the defenders of materialism.

So, the «red professor» Popov, for example, in his recent publication «Space-time theory of relativity and new physics» writes:

«The principle of relativity shows that space-time, in fact, is a reflection of the movement of matter in the unity of movement and transformation of material objects. But movement, following Hegel, is objectively a contradiction, is the continuity of rest and the negation of rest. Reflecting this contradiction, space is a form of existence of matter at rest, while time is in motion, a change of resting matter.»

Ordinary leftists express themselves less pretentiously, but the essence is the same:

«In the universe there is only matter and its development, or movement. Accordingly, time is just a reflection in the human consciousness of this movement of matter. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that time is a mathematical, quantitative expression of the development of the universe. That’s all.»

«Materialism denies immaterial objective realities, unchangeable something and absolute peace. Matter is absolute, the rest are forms of matter. There is nothing to do with absolute peace in materialism at all. Everything exists in motion, including space. Any Marxist should conclude that space is an attribute of matter, the result of the movement of matter. It’s already clear that there is no immaterial box for storing matter. This matter stores itself, changes itself, moves itself.»

It is easy to understand how people can come to such views: the bourgeois physics departments assert not only the truth of the conclusions of the theory of relativity about space and time, but also the truth of quantum uncertainty, the creation of the world by the «Big Bang» and many other extremely fashionable and extremely absurd theories and concepts, to oppose which, even if classics of Marxism are on “your side”, is not only uncomfortable, but also very unpopular. Therefore, we have to take «space-time» in one hand, Hegelian dialectics in the other and… speculate.

However, Soviet philosophers did the same thing, pushing aside the Marxist physicist Timiryazev and his supporters. The scientific community in the USSR was mired in administrative and paperwork, which means that with a one-time admission of pseudoscience will only grow like a snowball rolling down a hill. That is why Stalin initiated major scientific discussions, where false scientists were smashed, and an ideological and personnel purge of the ranks was carried out. But, unfortunately, because of Zhdanov’s son’s arrogance, the matter did not reach the physicists.

In the USA, a series of critical publications in scientific journals against the inflationary theory has recently been published, in response to which inflationary scientists have published a statement within which dozens of signatures of «prominent scientists» have been collected. The most «killer» argument was the following:

«There are nine thousand scientists working in the theory of inflation who have written fourteen thousand articles. Can it really not be science?»

In other words, any theory on which thousands of scientists have made a career, within the framework of science itself as an administrative system, will be protected at all costs. Such an approach promises to dominate science until it completely gets on the rails of the diamatic methodology, and when scientists at least begin to feel themselves primarily Marxists and revolutionaries, and not cabinet worms.

The sin of modern left-wing theorists «explains» the fact that they stand on the shoulders of the «giants» of Soviet philosophical thought, are accustomed to established judgment, and base their worldview largely on Soviet educational literature. Already in the first edition of the Big Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE), a certain Steinman wrote that space is a form of existence of matter, however, right there, separated by commas, quotes from the classics were quoted that space is a form of being. There’s no difference between being and matter, taught Soviet students, scientists, workers and peasants Steinman. Mitin(1) for example, wrote the same thing, in his textbook from 1934 «Dialectical and historical Materialism» so beloved by the leftists:

«The latest achievements of modern physics fully confirm the correctness of the Marxist doctrine of time and space, i.e. that they are the forms of existence of matter, that material movement is the unity of time and space, that our concepts of time and space are changing, being refined and developed in connection with the general development of science.»

And below is the phrase after which Mitin can be «written off» completely:

«The latest quantum mechanics deepens the concept of causality, makes adjustments to the old mechanistic understanding of causality.»

Why? Because the figures of quantum mechanics are inveterate idealists who did not hide their struggle against materialism, especially dialectical materialism. At the center of their theory, they put the denial of causality in the microcosm, which they tried with all their might to extend to the entire universe, including society. And it follows by itself from their theories: if macro-objects are woven from micro-objects, and micro-objects do not obey causality, then the causality that we observe in the macrocosm is at least not at all the same as materialism represents it.

Apparently, the «Marxist» Mitin was not at all embarrassed that the diamatic category of causality, instead of Engels and Lenin, was taught to him by the idealist and future Nazi accomplice Heisenberg.

A similar confusion is contained in Alexandrov ‘s 1954 textbook:

«Dialectical materialism teaches that space and time are active forms of the existence of matter. The recognition of the objective reality of space and time follows from the recognition of the materiality of the world… Space, time, and motion, as the root forms of the existence of matter, are in an organic inseparable unity, conditioned by the unity of the material world. The inseparability of space and time from matter is closely related to the inseparability of matter and motion. Matter is unthinkable outside of motion. The movement of matter always takes place in space and time. The objective nature of material motion determines the objectivity of space and time as the fundamental forms of being of moving matter. Since motion is inseparable from matter, space and time are also inseparable from matter.»

It is interesting, of course, to find out what are the passive forms of existence of matter and how do its active forms differ from the root ones?

In short, Alexandrov’s space and time are a kind of forms of matter, but at the same time matter moves in space and exists in time. As you want, so understand. But so that this mental contradiction could not be clearly read, Alexandrov and his collaborators constructed a transition from one thought to another through the concept of movement. It turned out that the motion of matter «flows in space and time.» In other words, the movement of matter proceeds in the forms of its existence. This is philosophical gibberish. It is as if the movement of the train «flowed» not along the rails of the railway track, but in the engineering characteristics of the rolling stock.

Alexandrov’s textbook explains many aspects of the theory of space and time in much more detail:

«Space is a form of being of matter that characterizes the extent of material objects; it is the fundamental condition of their movement. Space has specific properties that depend on the material objects themselves. These specific properties of space are the subject of a number of sciences. Time is a form of being of matter that characterizes the duration and sequence of material processes, expressing the objective connection of material movement. Time is the fundamental condition of all development. The movement and development of matter can only take place in space and in time. Any material thing exists in time, because nothing in the world is at rest, everything is subject to movement and change. But, on the other hand, there is no time without material things subject to change. Time, separated from matter, is considered by idealists as something that exists before material things, something that generates matter.»

It is not difficult to notice that the extent of material objects in Alexandrov is independent of space itself. Let’s take object «A» and objects «B,» «C,” «D,» and so on ad infinitum (obviously of different extent, since there are no identical objects in the universe.) These extensions relate to each other in a certain proportion, have a certain quantitative relationship with each other. And Alexandrov is quite content with this, because the ruler works in this case, but he doesn’t really care about the rest. But a real thinker, and not an academic craftsman, is obliged to raise the question that all these relative extensions to each other should have some common ground in order to form equality. By analogy: one quantity can be expressed by another quantity, but in the real world this operation makes sense only if this expression involves identical qualities. It is possible to express tons of apples in road interchanges only if the common ground in them is equated, for example, the average required social labor spent on their collection and construction. That is, in order to quantify something in something else, you need to have the same quality. The extent of one object in another is expressed in the same way, but what is the common «qualitative» basis? Some will say geometric abstraction: length, area, and other metrics. But what exactly does consciousness reflect when it creates this metric in the head? Extension itself, as a property of objects, answers this question as little as Alexandrov’s textbook.

Alexandrov went crazy into idealism, declaring, under the influence of the Machist Einstein, that space depends on material objects. Alexandrov is so eager to substantiate the conclusions of the theory of relativity about the slowing down of time and the curvature of space that he writes:

«The continuity of space and time is clearly revealed already when studying the simple mechanical movement of bodies. The speed of movement of bodies is measured by the amount of spatial movement of the body over a certain period of time. It makes no sense to talk about the speed of movement of a body only in space or only in time. Only the cumulative space-time characteristic reflects the actual movement of bodies relative to each other.»

Here, instead of space and time, you can substitute any material process, and the conclusions will not change. The «continuity» of the spatial position of any material object with the time it is in it is self-evident, and there is no need to resort to measuring speed. All material objects exist in space and in time, therefore, the fact that something exists in a certain place and at a certain time manifests itself in absolutely all processes. But this does not imply in any way the idealistic category of «space-time,» nor even more so that space or time depends on the forms of moving matter.

The situation gets completely messy when Alexandrov goes on to the fact that one of the properties of space and time is their infinity, which, of course, is denied by those physicists with whom Alexandrov entered into a philosophical alliance.

So, according to Alexandrov, space and time are forms of being of matter that directly depend on finite material objects, but at the same time, the property of these forms of being of matter is infinity. Infinite forms of being of finite matter… That’s really the reason why the academic discipline «Diamat» did not enjoy the attention of students.

Mitin, Alexandrov and the rest of the Soviet philosophers took this expression «forms of the existence of matter» from the appendices to the «Anti-During» included in the «Dialectic of Nature». But, firstly, these are the rough sketches of Engels, and secondly, in the uncut quotation everything is somewhat different:

“It is the old story. First of all one makes sensuous things into abstractions and then one wants to know them through the senses, to see time and smell space. The empiricist becomes so steeped in the habit of empirical experience, that he believes that he is still in the field of sensuous experience when he is operating with abstractions. We know what an hour is, or a metre, but not what time and space are! As if time was anything other than just hours, and space anything but just cubic metres! The two forms of existence of matter are naturally nothing without matter, empty concepts, abstractions which exist only in our minds. But, of course, we are supposed not to know what matter and motion are! Of course not, for matter as such and motion as such have not yet been seen or otherwise experienced by anyone, only the various existing material things and forms of motions.
Matter is nothing but the totality of material things from which this concept is abstracted and motion as such nothing but the totality of all sensuously perceptible forms of motion; words like matter and motion are nothing but abbreviations in which we comprehend many different sensuous perceptible things according to their common properties. Hence matter and motion can be known in no other way than by investigation of the separate material things and forms of motion, and by knowing these, we also pro tanto know matter and motion as such. Consequently, in saying that we do not know what time, space, matter, motion, cause and effect are, Nägeli merely says that first of all we make abstractions of the real world through our minds, and then can not know these selfmade abstractions because they are creations of thought and not sensuous objects, while all knowing is sensuous measurement! This is just like the difficulty mentioned by Hegel; we can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit, because no one has so far eaten fruit as such.”

Thus, it can be seen from this record that Engels smashes the ideas about the unknowability of space and time as extrasensory phenomena. And certainly it is not wise to build a theory of space and time around the phrase torn from this quote.

Moreover, in the very «Anti-Duhring,» Engels wrote:

“The subject at issue is not the idea of time, but real time, which Herr Dühring cannot rid himself of so cheaply. In the second place, however much the idea of time may convert itself into the more general idea of being, this does not take us one step further. For the basic forms of all being are space and time, and being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space. The Hegelian “being past away non-temporally” and the neo-Schellingian ”unpremeditatable being” are rational ideas compared with this being out of time. And for this reason Herr Dühring sets to work very cautiously; actually it is of course time, but of such a kind as cannot really be called time, time, indeed, in itself does not consist of real parts, and is only divided up at will by our mind – only an actual filling of time with distinguishable facts is susceptible of being counted – what the accumulation of empty duration means is quite unimaginable. What this accumulation is supposed to mean is here beside the point; the question is, whether the world, in the state here assumed, has duration, passes through a duration in time. We have long known that we can get nothing by measuring such a duration without content just as we can get nothing by measuring without aim or purpose in empty space; and Hegel, just because of the weariness of such an effort, calls such an infinity bad. According to Herr Dühring time exists only through change; change in and through time does not exist. Just because time is different from change, is independent of it, it is possible to measure it by change, for measuring always requires something different from the thing to be measured. And time in which no recognisable changes occur is very far removed from not being time; it is rather pure time, unaffected by any foreign admixtures, that is, real time, time as such. In fact, if we want to grasp the idea of time in all its purity, divorced from all alien and extraneous admixtures, we are compelled to put aside, as not being relevant here, all the various events which occur simultaneously or one after another in time, and in this way to form the idea of a time in which nothing happens. In doing this, therefore, we have not let the concept of time be submerged in the general idea of being, but have thereby for the first time arrived at the pure concept of time.”

If we correlate Engels’ idea that for measurement it is necessary to have something different from the things being measured with Alexandrov’s textbook, which preaches the absolute relativity of spatial position and time, since they are forms of the existence of matter and depend on the material objects themselves, then we will see an obvious contradiction not in favor of the Soviet philosopher.

Some will say that the forms of existence of matter are understood not as forms of matter itself, but as a way of its existence, that is, movements (changes). The point, of course, is not in words, our main task is not to dive into etymology or select the best words, but to identify the content of categories. The Russian language is extremely rich, second only to German in the accuracy of the philosophical arsenal. Therefore, you can say it in different ways, but the discrepancies in the content of the categories of Mitin, Alexandrov, and other philosophers with respect to the classics are visible just by the fact that the former accept, admit, and even welcome the dependence of space and time on matter, while the latter do not.

Is it possible to find space and time in Lenin’s works on thef forms of existence or forms of being of matter? No, but something opposite:

«Recognizing the existence of objective reality, i.e. moving matter, independently of our consciousness, materialism must inevitably also recognize the objective reality of time and space, unlike, first of all, Kantianism, which in this matter stands on the side of idealism, considers time and space not an objective reality, but forms of human contemplation. The fundamental divergence in this matter of the two main philosophical lines is quite clearly recognized by writers of the most diverse trends, by any consistent thinkers. Let’s start with the materialists.

“Space and time,” says Feuerbach, “are not mere forms of phenomena but essential conditions (Wesensbedingungen) … of being” (Werke, II, 332). Regarding the sensible world we know through sensations as objective reality, Feuerbach naturally also rejects the phenomenalist (as Mach would call his own conception) or the agnostic (as Engels calls it) conception of space and time. Just as things or bodies are not mere phenomena, not complexes of sensations, but objective realities acting on our senses, so space and time are not mere forms of phenomena, but objectively real forms of being. There is nothing in the world but matter in motion, and matter in motion cannot move otherwise than in space and time. Human conceptions of space and time are relative, but these relative conceptions go to compound absolute truth. These relative conceptions, in their development, move towards absolute truth and approach nearer and nearer to it. The mutability of human conceptions of space and time no more refutes the objective reality of space and time than the mutability of scientific knowledge of the structure and forms of matter in motion refutes the objective reality of the external world.»

Another retelling of the same pages from Feuerbach, but by Plekhanov:

«Man is only a part of Nature, a part of being; there is therefore no room for any contradiction between his thinking and his being. Space and time do not exist only as forms of thinking. They are also forms of being, forms of my contemplation. They are such, solely because I myself am a creature that lives in time and space, and because I sense and feel as such a creature. In general, the laws of being are at the same time laws of thinking. That is what Feuerbach said.»

The «fundamental conditions of being» in Lenin’s translation of Feuerbach and the «forms of being» in Plekhanov’s quite satisfied Lenin, and he himself wrote: «objectively real forms of being.» Are these expressions similar to the fact that space and time are forms of existence of matter? Are these expressions similar to the fact that infinite space and infinite time depend on finite material objects?

Mitin and Alexandrov, one indirectly, the second directly, added a tail to Engels’ and Lenin’s «forms of being»: forms of being… matter. Did Feuerbach, Engels, and Lenin spare their ink to write: «space and time are forms of being of matter» and limited themselves only to «forms of being»?

It is also interesting in this aspect that in the Russian translation of «Anti-During» there is such a phrase:

«Motion is the mode of existence of matter.»

But Lenin in the encyclopedic article «Karl Marx» translates the same phrase from German in a slightly different way:

«Motion is a form of being of matter.»

And both of these translations quite correctly reflect the property of matter to be in continuous motion, change. If Soviet philosophers and modern leftists accept as truth Lenin’s translation of Engels, that is, that motion is a form of being of matter, then their new models «space and time are forms of being of matter» will disappear by themselves. In other words, either the form of existence of matter is motion (change), or space and time.

However, after diligently reading the opuses of philosophical speculators, there is a suspicion that many of them may well be content with the formula that both motion and «space-time» are forms of the existence of matter. How to understand this? It doesn’t matter, neither students nor party members will ask anyway.

Generally speaking, motion (change), being a property of matter, is even mentally inseparable from it. It is possible to imagine matter in a state of absolute rest, in a frozen form, although if you get carried away, it is fraught with falling into error. Imagining movement (change) in any rational way without matter is impossible in principle. This is due precisely to the fact that the first is a property of the second, and not vice versa.

So, if space and time are forms of being of matter, there should be difficulties with their mental separation from matter, philosophical research. But the reader himself saw perfectly well that none other than Engels demanded to investigate the category of time by representing pure time. Actually, there can be no other way here. It was only Einstein who «explored» time by filling the entire space with a mechanical clock.

What exactly is being? Soviet dictionaries, textbooks, and philosophical publications, as a rule, do not answer this question, offering to focus on the category of «social being.» But if there is the existence of society, then there must be the existence of the entire universe.

It can be seen from everything that all Soviet and modern philosophers reduce the concept of being to the concept of matter. Such a technique seems very materialistic, they say, there is nothing but matter given to us in sensations,» as Lenin wrote,» these vulgar materialists will say. Yes, only it was «forgotten» that Lenin wrote not just about matter, but about matter continuously moving in space and existing in time, indestructible and never created by anyone.

It is necessary to treat Einstein and other Machists with great reverence in order to see in Lenin’s formula not three elements: space, time, and moving matter, but one — matter, the forms of existence of which are space and time. And in the philosophy of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period, this formula was «refined» with a file to «space and time are attributes of matter.» In other words, they are properties of matter. There was a complete correspondence with idealistic physical theories.

At the same time, it is clear that the term «attribute» in meaning will copy the famous use of it by Engels:

«Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.»

Therefore, in the «Book for reading on Marxist Philosophy» — a 1960 hodgepodge of such bigwigs as Rosenthal, Furman, Ozerman, and seven other doctors and candidates of philosophical sciences, it is stated:

«Since matter is always moving and moving in space and time, dialectical materialism considers motion, space and time to be inherent properties of matter.»

It is difficult to say whether, for example, Alexandrov and Mitin would agree to such a formulation, but it seems that the classics of Marxism would be categorically opposed to it. To move in its own property is to come up with such a thing.

The admiration of philosophers for idealistic physicists is perfectly illustrated by Kuznetsov’s phrase in the 1974 lectures «The History of Philosophy for Physicists and Mathematicians»:

«It turned out that space itself has dynamic properties and that these properties are expressed in the geometry of space. If the field not only exists in space, but is also expressed in certain geometric properties of space (namely, the gravitational field is expressed in the curvature and change of the fundamental metric tensor), then we return to the centuries—old difficulty of individualizing the body.»

I wonder why Lenin, after studying Mach and the Machists, did not say: «it turned out» that matter disappears, but there is only movement? After all, their research «proved», among other things, that:

«Heat is a kind of motion, elasticity is a kind of motion, light and magnetism are a kind of motion. The mass itself turns out, even in the end, as it is supposed, to be a kind of motion—the motion of something that is neither a solid body, nor a liquid and not a gas-is not itself a body and not an aggregate of bodies.»

Lenin was not as trusting as nine highly-awarded Soviet philosophers who were showered with titles and positions:

«To sever Engels’ doctrine of the objective reality of time and space from his doctrine of the transformation of “things-in-themselves” into “things-for-us,” from his recognition of objective and absolute truth, viz., the objective reality given us in our sensations, and from his recognition of objective law, causality and necessity in nature—is to reduce an integral philosophy to an utter jumble. Like all the Machians, Bazarov erred in confounding the mutability of human conceptions of time and space, their exclusively relative character, with the immutabil-ity of the fact that man and nature exist only in time and space, and that beings outside time and space, as invented by the priests and maintained by the imagination of the ignorant and downtrodden mass of humanity, are disordered fantasies, the artifices of philosophical idealism—rotten products of a rotten social system. The teachings of science on the structure of matter, on the chemical composition of food, on the atom and the electron, may and constantly do become obsolete, but the truth that man is unable to subsist on ideas and to beget children by platonic love alone never becomes obsolete. And a philosophy that denies the objective reality of time and space is as absurd, as intrinsically rotten and false as is the denial of these latter truths. The artifices of the idealists and the agnostics are on the whole as hypocritical as the sermons on platonic love of the pharisees!».

The Soviet half-dissident Spinozist, Trotskyist, and market socialism advocate Ilyenkov, was a big fan of Einstein, but at the same time still used his head when reflecting about philosphy (which, however, then for some reason tried to cut off in front of his wife), therefore, he made a fanciful, but no less speculative, declaration that the more paradoxical the «genius Einstein» is, the more «dialectical,» that is, the more correct, his theory is:

«The «contradiction» is familiar to any modern science. It is worth remembering at least the circumstances within which the brilliant theory of relativity was born. Attempts to assimilate certain phenomena identified in Michelson’s experiments using the categories of classical mechanics led to the fact that ridiculous, paradoxical «contradictions» appeared inside the system of concepts of classical mechanics, which are fundamentally not solvable using the categories of classical mechanics, and it was as a way to resolve these contradictions that Einstein’s ingenious hypothesis was born.

But the theory of relativity did not save the theory from contradiction either. So far, neither the author of the theory of relativity nor anyone else has solved the well-known paradox in the theoretical definitions of a rotating body. It consists in the following: The theory of relativity, which connects the spatial characteristics of bodies with their motion, expresses this relationship in the formula according to which the «length of the body» decreases in the direction of motion the more the body moves. This mathematical expression of the universal law of motion of a body in space has entered the mathematical arsenal of modern physics as a solid theoretical conquest.

But an attempt with its help to theoretically process, theoretically assimilate such a real physical case as the rotation of a solid disk around an axis leads to a «ridiculous» paradox. It turns out that the circumference of the rotating disk is reduced the more the speed of rotation is greater, and the length of the radius of the rotating body, according to the same formula, must remain unchanged…

Note that this «paradox» is not just a curiosity, but a case in which the question of the physical reality of Einstein’s universal formulas is acutely raised. If the universal formula expresses the objectively universal law of the objective reality studied in physics, then in the objective reality itself, an objectively paradoxical relationship between the radius and the circumference of a rotating body should be assumed — even in the case of the rotation of a child’s top — because the insignificance of the reduction of the circle does not change anything in the fundamental formulation of the question.

The belief that such a paradoxical relationship «cannot exist» in physical reality itself is absolutely tantamount to refusing to recognize the physical reality of the universal law expressed by Einstein’s formula. And this is the way to a purely instrumentalist justification of the universal law. It serves the law of theory and practice — well and good, and there is nothing to ask an empty question about whether something in «things in themselves» corresponds to it or not. This is how the author of the theory of relativity himself preferred to come to terms with the paradox.

It would be possible to cite many more examples of this kind, certifying that the objective reality is always revealed to theoretical thinking as a contradictory reality. The history of science from Zeno of Elea to Albert Einstein, regardless of any philosophy, shows this fact as an indisputable empirically ascertainable fact.»

Really, stupid «instrumentalists»! Here a real suicidal philosopher, in accordance with «dialectics,» must humbly accept the contradictions, illogic, and mysticism of any theory put forward by people with membership cards of academies of sciences, especially European ones. «There are nine thousand scientists who have written fourteen thousand articles. Can it really not be science?» And if Einstein himself said that, then it must be even more so……

It is a pity that Ilyenkov did not leave us works where he, with his inherent philosophical skill, would tell us what the objective physical reality that the theory of relativity preaches looks like. More or less intelligent theoretical physicists still prefer not to demonstrate any specific model of physical reality corresponding to the theory of relativity, limiting themselves to a mathematical description, and simpletons draw grids with balls in them and talk about getting rid of aging with the help of space travel.

In the book «Engels and modern problems of the philosophy of Marxism» in 1971, edited by Iovchuk and with a «killer» composition of authors from the USSR and the GDR (for each chapter, a professor of philosophy), it is said that:

«Engels also considers space and time as the most important attributes and forms of being of matter, emphasizing that being outside of time is fundamentally impossible, as is being outside of space.»

However, the author of this quote, Askin, as a result of his «long and fruitful philosophical career,» has developed a whole new theory of time, putting forward different types of time: historical time, social time, cultural time and even individual time, that is, subjective time of the individual. And all this is within the framework of «official Marxism,» or, as stated in the above article, within the framework of «playing by the rules.»

As even a simple acquaintance with the biographies of prominent Soviet philosophers who wrote, for example, in the BSE shows, the littering of Trotskyists, careerists, opportunists in philosophy was colossal. And after all, it is known how these philosophers «taught» Soviet citizens Marxism, but many leftists still continue to «learn» from their writings.

The subjective-idealistic interpretation of space and time asserts that they are images of our thinking mixed with matter (according to Einstein, time is the course of the clock, space does not exist at all, he calls space an invisible spherical material world spreading semi-cocoon). The vulgar-materialistic interpretation of space and time asserts that they are attributes, that is, properties, of matter. The only difference is that subjective idealists see consciousness as the source of ideas about space and time, while vulgar materialists see matter itself. Both concepts allow us to serve the idea of the dependence of space and time on each other and, what is even more terrible, on material objects. All these «Marxist» philosophers essentially reduce time to the speed of the flow of physical processes, and space to the volume of material objects. It turns out that space and time are material.

The problem is also that in the formulation and resolution of the main question of philosophy, space and time do not seem to participate, they seem to remain above the fray. So, Lenin wrote:

«The question then is, are there more comprehensive concepts with which the theory of knowledge could operate than those of being and thinking, matter and sensation, physical and mental? No. These are the ultimate, most comprehensive concepts, which epistemology has in point of fact so far not surpassed (apart from changes in nomenclature, which are always possible). One must be a charlatan or an utter blockhead to demand a “definition” of these two “series” of concepts of ultimate comprehensiveness which would not be a “mere repetition”: one or the other must be taken as primary.»

Is the concept of space broader or is the concept of matter narrower? Is the concept of time broader or is the concept of matter narrower? And finally, which is broader — space or time — as philosophical categories? The absurdity of these questions, if we stand firmly on the basis of diamatics, shows that in the main question of philosophy, space and time are taken as conditions of the material world, in which it turns out that matter or spirit is primary. Space, time, and matter are not correlated either «in width» or «in depth» concepts. Only with the stricken psyche of a proponent of the theory of relativity can a loaf of bread and space or a bus and time be compared. There is only one category wider than the categories of matter, space and time, since it includes them — this is the category of «being.»

There is not a single facet of time or space in the infinite variety of moving forms of matter. No matter how deeply you penetrate into the essence of a particular material object, nothing in it will reveal itself as an element of time or space. On the contrary, in order to «get to the bottom» of the concept of time, it is necessary, following Engels, to imagine pure time, time in which nothing happens. To «get to the bottom» of the concept of space, it is necessary to imagine a pure space, a space in which there is nothing.

The continuity of matter, space, and time is manifested, firstly, in the fact that moving matter fills the entire infinite space and exists in time from the infinite past to the present moment, and none of them is possible in any other way; secondly, in the fact that infinite space, which represents absolute peace, is indifferent to the infinitely current absolutely pure time and vice versa. At the same time, matter, whose main difference from space and time is that it is continuously changing, refers to space and time as the conditions of its being.

Being, therefore, is a complex of objective realities, the main characteristic of which is infinity and universality. Being is everything that has been, that is, that will be. It is unchangeable because it is infinite. There is nothing but matter moving in space and existing in time. This is «everything».

But this does not mean that there is no space or no time. After all, in whatever words the opportunists denounce their research about space and time, the verdict for them is the recognition of the possibility of the influence of matter on space and time. They thus deny that time and space are separate immaterial objective realities.

Space is a philosophical category of objective reality in the form of absolute rest. No other absolute peace than space is conceivable and any other interpretation is speculation, by definition. Hence follow the main characteristics of absolute rest: space is integral and infinite, it is the infinite receptacle of everything finite.

Time is a philosophical category of objective reality in the form of absolutely pure movement. No absolutely pure movement, except time, is possible and by definition is a speculation. Hence, following the main characteristics of pure motion — time is irreversible, progressive, and it «moves» by the current moment from the infinite past. If there were no current moment, then absolute motion would be indistinguishable from absolute rest. It is the moment of the present that allows us to «define» this pure movement.

Space appears as infinite continuity, and time, in turn, as infinite pure motion. Space and time are immaterial objective realities.

The expression «immaterial objective realities» will cause a fit of anger among vulgar materialists and an accusation of idealism. But what is the main sin of idealism? A minority of the modern left will say at most that idealism is anti-scientific, that is, it does not correspond to objective reality. Most of them will start making noise that it’s just not possible and that’s it. In fact, the main sin of idealism is the presence of a subject that plays the role of an idea or spirit, which is why Lenin taught that all idealism is ultimately fideism, that is, popery. That is why idealism is anti-scientific. At the same time, the same subject, of course, manifests his will in such a way as to keep the «world of things» in a favorable state for well-known persons. Subjective idealism, setting limits to knowledge, opens the front door to popery.

Take, for example, the system of Hegel, whose absolute idea has no will. Hegel tried to base the absolute idea on those objective laws of the universe, which he revealed by summarizing the data of all the sciences of his time, including by reworking the entire world philosophy. It would be strange if Hegel developed dialectics in a comprehensive way for the first time, albeit in a mystified form, but at the same time his philosophizing would not be based on an analysis of real scientific facts. The rational grain of Hegelian dialectics is born from the analysis of the objective world. Hegel gave a comprehensive and conscious representation of the universal forms of movement. However, at the same time, the Hegelian system turned out to be vicious, firstly, because it denied the development of the material world itself:

«…natural philosophy, particularly in the Hegelian form, erred because it did not concede to nature any development in time, any “succession,” but only “co-existence”. This was on the one hand grounded in the Hegelian system itself, which ascribed historical evolution only to the “spirit”, but on the other hand was also due to the whole state of the natural sciences in that period.» — Engels.

Secondly, the fact that the Hegelian system turned out to be complete as a whole, and this, of course, served as a well-known justification for the existing economic and political orders, for example, in Prussia. Thus, Hegel, the crown of idealistic philosophy, does not seem to operate with a thinking spirit, but still conserves philosophy, thereby turning it speculative, that is, false.

So, the sin of idealism and the essence of idealism is that it mixes something subjective with objective being. Naturally, asserting the primacy of the spirit and ideas, objective idealists can not help but mix too much. However, it is possible to mix the subjective even after recognizing the primacy of matter. For example, subjectivist ideas about the essence of space and time: It turns out that if the consistent idealists of the past directly stated the primacy of the subjective and their philosophy danced from this, today the opportunists mostly position themselves as materialists, while masking their idealism. The main arena of philosophical battles has long been epistemology, as an integral part of the main issue of philosophy. And the confusion of matter, space and time, for example, opens the door to the idealism of the curvature of space, insubstantial matter, time dilation, and other things.

The creeping revision of the materialist theory of space and time, in fact, the surrender of fundamental categories by Soviet philosophers to Machists, allowed a reconciliation of the philosophy of Marxism and the conclusions of relativistic physics. And, it seems, it all started with the expression «the form of being of matter,» which gives a wide scope of understanding. It is indisputable, for example, that all the infinite variety of material objects and processes in the world that are in continuous motion represents an endless change of stable forms of existence of matter. This formulation cannot be misinterpreted without falling into mysticism. It shows that the forms of existence of matter are the forms of matter, which are a manifestation of the absolute qualities of matter — its variability, that is, motion, eternity, that is, non-creation, indestructibility and divisibility (discreteness or corpuscularity). Thus, in fact, matter exists as an objective reality.

Movement (change), increatability, and indestructibility are the forms of being of matter, and the forms of matter themselves are nothing but infinitely discrete things or objects. In other words, all material objects have an extension (which in natural sciences is understood as volume), contain a certain amount of matter (which in natural sciences is understood as mass) and consist of composite, simpler, material objects. And nothing else can be considered matter.

Whereas Soviet philosophy said this: there is a philosophical concept of matter, and there is a natural-scientific one, and the philosophical one is exhausted by the recognition of matter as an objective reality given to us in sensations (see, for example, the first volume of Mitin’s textbook of 1934, pp. 107-109). And they say all its other parameters are a matter for physicists. Soviet philosophers recognized motion as the only unshakable property of matter, but that is because Lenin wrote about it a hundred times directly. Yet, aren’t the quantity of matter, the extension, and the discreteness of its properties equally unshakable? Engels and Lenin also wrote about this. Wouldn’t the classics limit themselves to using a single category of «matter» if space and time were just its properties?

Why did Soviet philosophy give physicists the amount of matter, its discreteness and materiality, space and time, even causality, but not the motion of matter? Everything is extremely simple — what Einstein and Heisenberg demanded, they gave. Or here Minkovsky writes in his legendary article «Space and Time»:

«The views of space and time which I want to present to you arose from the domain of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. Their tendency is radical. From now onwards space by itself and time by itself will recede completely to become mere shadows and only a type of union of the two will still stand independently on its own.

(…) Hereafter we would then have in the world no more the space, but an infinite number of spaces analogously as there is an infinite number of planes in three-dimensional space. Three-dimensional geometry becomes a chapter in four-dimensional physics. You see why I said at the beginning that space and time will recede completely to become mere shadows and only a world in itself will exist.»

Well, how can you object to the «experimental-physical basis»? What do Soviet philosophers do when they encounter such investigations? Just believe in them. What did Engels and Lenin do, for example? They studied physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and processed the data of individual sciences from a mathematical point of view. Dialectics does not consist in explaining the existence of the Holy Spirit with the help of three laws, but in the subject study, and in this case in the diamatic processing of these particular sciences.

In general, we strongly recommend that leftists independently, following the example of Engels and Lenin, familiarize themselves with the works of the creators of the «new physics»: at least Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohr, and not read Soviet textbooks, including on Marxism, mixed with Wikipedia.

*

The diamatic definition of matter as a philosophical category is presented above. Opponents will definitely make two claims against her.

Firstly,

they say, the concept of matter should be developed on the basis of modern physics, which means that, following the idealist physicists, it is necessary to recognize fields, photons, gravity, and «quantum phenomena» as insubstantial forms of matter, matter that «cannot be felt.» Opponents in this case always, discarding all the diamatics, refer to two quotes from Engels and Lenin:

“With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it has to change its form; and after history was also subjected to materialistic treatment, a new avenue of development has opened here, too.”

“Human conceptions of space and time are relative, but these relative conceptions go to compound absolute truth. These relative conceptions, in their development, move towards absolute truth and approach nearer and nearer to it. The mutability of human conceptions of space and time no more refutes the objective reality of space and time than the mutability of scientific knowledge of the structure and forms of matter in motion refutes the objective reality of the external world.”

They say here that Engels directly provides for the «development» of materialism, and hence the possibility of revising fundamental categories. Here, Lenin writes directly about the variability of ideas about space and time. And yet Lenin wrote:

“It goes without saying that in examining the connection between one of the schools of modern physicists and the rebirth of philosophical idealism, it is far from being our intention to deal with specific physical theories. What interests us exclusively is the epistemological conclusions that follow from certain definite propositions and generally known discoveries.”

From which the leftists conclude that Render unto Caesar, and they only accept the concepts of Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and other Hawkings as guidelines. After all, it has been «proven by experiments»!

To overthrow this argument, it is necessary to highlight two points: a) are the concepts of matter, space and time developing? b) are matter, space, and time developing (or at least changing) as objective realities?

Lenin, regarding the «development» of the concept of matter, pointed out:

“Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them. Therefore, to say that such a concept can become “antiquated” is childish talk, a senseless repetition of the arguments of fashionable reactionary philosophy.”

The idea of the existence of immaterial matter, which is allegedly proved by experiments, for example, the conclusions of relativistic physics about the nature of the electromagnetic field, light, gravity, and the provisions of various «interpretations» of quantum mechanics about microparticles, is a clear extension of the philosophical category of «matter,» and therefore falls under Lenin’s idea of obsolescence. The concept of matter, covering all material objects and processes, is outdated, as left theorists argue–it is necessary to expand it with the achievements of modern physics, namely to include new non-material «types», «forms» or «kinds» of matter.

And the very «material (stofflich), sensually perceived by us world» of Engels is therefore recognized as insufficient.

If you read «Materialism and Empirio-criticism» properly, then such a focus is, of course, impossible from the point of view of Marxism. He falls under this valuable remark of Lenin:

“Engels says explicitly that “with each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science [“not to speak of the history of mankind”], materialism has to change its form” (Ludwig Feuerbach, German edition, p. 19).” 93 Hence, a revision of the “form” of Engels’ materialism, a revision of his natural-philosophical propositions, is not only not “revisionism”, in the accepted meaning of the term, but, on the contrary, is an essential requirement of Marxism. We criticise the Machists not for making such a revision, but for their purely revisionist trick of betraying the essence of materialism under the guise of criticising its form and of adopting the fundamental propositions of reactionary bourgeois philosophy without making the slightest attempt to deal directly, frankly and definitely with assertions of Engels’ which are unquestionably of extreme im-portance for the given question, as, for example, his assertion that “… motion without matter is unthinkable.””

As can be seen, Lenin defends the essence of materialism, insists, for example, on the inseparability of motion and matter as an unshakable, absolute truth. In this connection, do the provisions of Marxism on the material nature of matter relate to the essence of materialism? Apparently, according to left-wing theorists, they do not, since they so easily abandoned it in favor of «experimentalist»-idealists.

Soviet philosophers and left-wing theorists firmly believe that Lenin’s definition of matter is limited to the simple idea that matter is what is beyond consciousness. If tomorrow some regular Kaku finally declares that experiments have confirmed the presence of the Holy Spirit who pressed the button to execute the Big Bang, then these epigones of idealistic categories, if they are really consistent, will be forced to admit this too. After all, the Holy Spirit will become an objective reality given (in the words of «respected people») in sensations, which is copied, photographed, and displayed by sensations, existing independently of them. Thus, the scope and meaning of the category «matter» is reduced by these «Marxists» to interpretations of physical experiments. And the «interpreters» are entirely idealistic saboteurs and muddlers.

From the point of view of the diamatic methodology, a philosophical category is, firstly, an extremely general and extremely concrete scientific abstraction, the richness of the content of which guarantees the systematization and coordinated inclusion of any particular fact or a number of facts. Secondly, it is the concept of a phenomenon that does not allow arbitrary interpretation. Thirdly, it is a concept reflecting objective laws, forms, or sides of objective material reality, the nodal points of cognition. The philosophical category always presupposes its full compliance with the entire socio-historical practice of mankind.

The category of matter in diamatics was developed by the classics of Marxism as a result of the generalization and systematization of all scientific truths; it is based on the principle of materialism — not to mix in anything subjective. There is no doubt that the above formulation of the category of matter is the absolute truth in content, that is, it will never change. It is an axiom of materialism. Therefore, there is nothing more stupid than a «Marxist» who claims that physicists have given him a «practice» that corrects this concept.

The Working Group on the Miraculous Signs of the ROC also gives a lot of very original «practice.»

A Marxist should first understand the phyisical meaning of conclusions made on the basis of general and special relativity or quantum mechanics, and understand diamatics in order to subject the results of experiments to materialistic processing because the conclusions of Einstein, Eddington, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Pauli, Frank, Jordan, and others, for example, about space, time and matter contradict materialism. And since these conclusions are closely related to their physical theories themselves, the latter are also false. They do not penetrate into the essence of phenomena, do not reveal the physical meaning of the studied processes, but only describe, mainly quantitatively, some physical dependencies. Therefore, the «formulas work», and theoretical physics stood still for almost the entire 20th century. We have not learned anything meaningful about electricity, photon, magnetism, gravity, and the constituent elements of atomic nuclei. Therefore, the entire experimental part of physics has been reduced to colliders, in which two «somethings» accelerate hundreds of billions of times and «slap» against each other, electronically fixing the ionization trace of the trajectory, and on the plates — the «statistics» of sparks.

Our opponents often do not understand that new scientific truths cannot cancel previously established truths. Science evolves from first-order truth to second-order truth, and so on ad infinitum. The new, deeper truth negates the old truth not by abolishing, overthrowing, but by deepening. Roughly speaking, in general terms in physics it looks like that each new stage of science is the establishment and study of the laws of the building elements of the previous level. Substances are the building elements of natural formations. Molecules and atoms are the building blocks of substances. Elementary particles are the building blocks of atoms. Ether particles are the building blocks of protons and neutrons. And so on ad infinitum. The field in this case is a disturbance of the gaseous aether. A photon is a configuration of aethereal vortices. Gravity is the pushing as a result of the temperature difference of aethereal formations. And no mysticism. All physics, even of a macrobody, even of a microbody, even of a micro-microbody, even of turtle speeds, even of light speeds, even of speeds a hundred billion times higher than light, ultimately, if not explained by the laws of mechanics, should not contradict them since the latter grasped the main thing in the material nature of matter, just as the knowledge of all complex forms of matter, up to society, cannot contradict the laws of mechanics and mathematics. Nothing can happen and change in matter if there is no mechanical interaction, movement, and propagation of these forms of interaction. The forms of being of matter become more complicated, develop, and progress if the sum of the moments of the amount of motion of matter changes, the relationship between these forms of motion per unit of time.

Another thing is that materialists do not contrast mechanical and non-mechanical interaction. Therefore, the truths established about molecules and atoms do not cancel the truths established about substances. They relate to each other as first-order truths to second-order truths.

Moreover, our opponents do not recognize the principle of scientific thinking, which consists in demanding the movement of thought from the general to the particular, from the philosophical understanding of the world to its particulars.

Thus, the development of the category of matter refers to the enrichment of its new concrete content. We deepen our knowledge of the world, but the universal, the «essence of materialism» (Lenin), remains unchanged. It cannot be that science has «suddenly» established something that would refute at least one scientific truth. If this happens, it means either the first truth was not scientific, or the new finding is false. Otherwise, the fundamental conclusion of diamatics about the unity of the world, the unity of which, by the way, consists in materiality, would be violated. That is, the forms of matter themselves are so «coordinated» with each other by obligatory indissoluble connections that their scientific knowledge excludes any contradictions. That is, matter moves in space and exists in time, therefore, space and time are given to us as objects of cognition only through matter, its changes in space and time.

The second point concerns whether matter, space and time are developing or at least changing as objective realities. As a rule, this issue is completely bypassed in both Soviet and modern literature.

It was shown above that, for example, Alexandrov, crossing Marxism and relativism, created an absurd model: matter moves and exists in its own properties. And all because Alexandrov, like other Soviet philosophers, handed over the fundamental categories of being to physicists. And idealistic physicists attribute curvature and expansion to space, that is, space, at least, moves. It is difficult to say whether space is developing from their point of view, but given the intensity of mysticism, this is also possible.

Taking into account the initial attitude of left-wing theorists to dialectics, it should be assumed that the majority will take the position that matter as a whole, space and time are supposedly changing and even developing.

It is difficult for a mentally healthy person to imagine what space is moving in, where the universe is expanding. Our opponents, without admitting to agnosticism as idealistic physicists, always answer the same way: it expands and that’s it. They seem to consider it a great achievement of materialistic thought to assert that space expands into nowhere and bends relative to nothing.

It is even more difficult to understand the subjectivity of time as such. Einstein assures us that time is not an objective reality:

«To determine the time at each point in space, we can imagine it populated with a very great number of clocks of identical construction. Let us consider the points A, B, C, …, each of which is furnished with a clock and is referred to a system in nonaccelerated motion with the aid of time-independent coordinates. We will now be able to know the time at any of the locations at which we choose to put a clock. If we choose a sufficiently large number of clocks, so that we can ascribe to each of them a sufficiently small domain, we will be able to fix any instant whatsoever, at any location in space, to any egree of accuracy desired. But we cannot obtain in this manner a definition of time useful to a physicist, because we did not say what the position of the clock hands should be at a given instant of time at different spatial points. We forgot to synchronize our clocks, and it is clear that the intervals of time elapsed during some event have a certain extension that will vary considerably as the event occupies this or that point in space..

To get a complete physical definition of time, we have to take an additional step: We have to say in what manner all of the clocks have been set at the start of the experiment. We will proceed as follows: First, we furnish ourselves with a means of sending signals, be it from A to B, or from B to A. This means should be such that we have no reason whatsoever to believe that the phenomena of signal transmission in the direction AB will differ in any way whatsoever from the phenomena of signal transmission in the direction BA..

(…)

Hence we will have to synchronize our clocks in such a way that the time spent by a signal traveling from A to B be equal to the time spent by an identical signal traveling from B to A. Now we possess a well-defined method by which to synchronize two clocks with respect to each other. Once the synchronization has been done, we will say that the two clocks are in phase. If, step by step, we regulate clock B against clock A, clock C against clock B …, we obtain a series of clocks such that any of them is in phase with the preceding one. Moreover, any two nonconsecutive clocks in the series must also be in phase by virtue of the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light. The totality of the readings of all of these clocks in phase with one another is what we will call the physical time.

(…)

Let us now make an important remark: In order to define the physical time with respect to a coordinate system, we used a group of clocks in a state of rest relative to that system. According to this definition, the time readings or the establishment of the simultaneity of two events have meaning only if the motion of the group of clocks or that of the coordinate system is known. Consider two nonaccelerated coordinate systems S and S’ in uniform translational motion with respect to one another. Suppose that each of these systems is provided with a group of clocks invariably attached to it, and that all clocks belonging to the same system are in phase. Under these conditions, the readings of the group attached to S will define the physical time with respect to S; analogously, the readings of the group attached to S’ define the physical time with respect to S’. Each elementary event will have a time coordinate t with respect to S, and a time coordinate t with respect to S’. But, we have no right to assume a priori that the clocks of the two groups can be set in such a manner that the two time coordinates of the elementary event would be the same, or in other words, in such a way that t would be equal to t’. To assume this would mean to introduce an arbitrary hypothesis. This hypothesis has been introduced into kinematics up to the present time.»

Thus, Einstein reduces time to the flow of physical processes. It is clear that in this case time moves along with the forms of matter as their component part, which is meaningless, since in this case time as such is denied existence. Such a concept of time is exhausted by equating one interval of changes in the system of material objects with any other material process. The absolute relativity of the flow of various material processes is obtained. It is from this that Einstein concludes that there is no objective time, since all relative measurements would have to be correlated with absolute time, only then would equality be observed between them. However, «to assume this would mean to introduce an arbitrary hypothesis», therefore, time flows for each process and only by measuring it with a clock can the time of one process be correlated with the time of another process. This «clever» maxim resembles a philistine exclamation about the historical truth heard: «How do you know, you weren’t there.» This is the physical postulate about the subjectivity of time.

«The primitive subjective feeling of time flow enables us to order our impressions, to judge that one event takes place earlier, another later. But to show that the time interval between two events is 10 seconds, a clock is needed. By the use of a clock the time concept becomes objective. Any physical phenomenon may beused as a clock, provided it can be exactly repeated as many times as desired,» writes Einstein.

If a materialist brings various material processes to a common denominator, for example, the processes of his economic life to the rotation of the Earth around its axis, then he is obviously aware of the fact that the «totality» of the relative, which is equal to each other, indicates the presence of the absolute. Einstein thought in the same way, only from the opposite, idealistic, message, and therefore denies the equality of t and t1 in the quoted thought experiment.

Objective time, being pure movement, is at the same time incapable of change. Time can only increase.

Neither space nor time can move anywhere, change in any way. They are absolute: space is peace, time is pure movement. With some assumption, we can say that space moves in time, in the sense that it exists together with the present moment. Yesterday’s space, of course, can no longer be. Space and time are incapable of change because they are devoid of internal opposites. In both space and time, the form completely coincides with the content.

There is no more sense in the idea that matter as a whole is moving or developing somewhere. Matter fills all space with an infinite variety of its forms. All infinite in quantity and infinitely diverse in quality material objects already within themselves at a given time contain the potential for their development at the next momet of time. Some forms of matter progress, others degrade, but matter as a whole remains unchanged, since it is infinite, it has not been created and is indestructible. It is the infinite past of the material world that guarantees at every single moment of time the content of the potential for development and prejudges all subsequent acts of movement of forms of matter. The movement of forms of matter, including in the form of development, is due to the fact that matter is substantial, that is, corpuscular, each material object is an unity of opposites.

Thus, the argument that materialism should develop through reconciliation with the conclusions of idealistic physics is not valid. The «new physics» works against the essence of materialism, which, as truths of the most general order, must be defended and accepted as guiding fundamental categories, as axioms.

Secondly,

opponents like to write that we, they say, confuse the concept of matter and the concept of substance. However, if we talk about physics, then insubstantial matter is the very phenomena whose truly materialistic interpretation is mentioned above. Then they will immediately turn into substances, and the nonsense about the absence of mass in particles, the curvature of space and the slowing down of time will be attributed to the very funny, but extremely shameful methods of the science of stupefying people, which the exploitative class used like a religious drug. But the opponents will still have the last trump card — society as a special form of matter.

Does society as a form of matter have a material character? Yes and no. The electromagnetic form of movement in the form of lightning, for example, is much older than the electromagnetic form of movement in the form of thought, but it is possible that today the quantitative characteristic of this second form is significantly higher than the total power of lightning per unit of time. The place of lightning in the earth’s nature has not changed for millions of years. The form of electromagnetic processes in the brain is constantly changing, including in its intensity, volume and quality of the tasks being solved in reality. And if we add to this the entire amount of electricity spent on ensuring the operation of computers, including servers that ensure the movement of thought in society, then it is clear that the mechanical movement of electrons in nature plays, from a materialistic point of view, an important role in the progress of mankind.

However, at the same time, the social interactions taking place in society cannot be called mechanical. Society as a form of matter differs from its other forms mainly by the presence, along with objective forms of reflection (reducible to mechanics), of subjective forms of reflection called individual and social consciousness. The biological basis of thinking is the physico-chemical process of the brain and nervous system, the biological basis of work is the mechanistic interaction of people with each other and the impact on the body of nature, even the biological basis of communication is the mechanical vibrations of the air environment. And all this is quite understandable from the point of view of mechanics. However, at the same time, the complexity and unity of all the physicochemical processes of society’s existence is expressed in the appearance of a new kind of reflection — consciousness. Therefore, all social interactions, although based on a physico-chemical basis, represent certain products of consciousness.

The concept of social existence, that is, the fact that humanity objectively exists, in certain natural conditions, and, at the same time, the fact that people live at any given time in a certain way, with a certain method of reproduction of society, by itself assumes that people are living organisms, and their reproduction is a system of material processes: reproduction, material and spiritual production. This constitutes the material character of society as a social form of matter. Therefore, the general position of Marxism, as a science of society, is that social being is primary.

Thus, society, as well as the biological form of matter, that is, the plant and animal world, do not contradict the fundamental conclusion of diamatics about the material nature of all forms of matter.

*

The reader may ask: what, in fact, does the proletariat care whether left-wing philosophers consider space and time to be separate objective realities or properties of matter? How does this even relate to real life? These questions should be considered on the basis of understanding why Lenin published «Materialism and Empirio-Criticism» in 1909 and republished it in 1920.

The historical fate of communism proves the key importance of the ideological purity of the party as the most important condition for its Marxist competence in general and its leadership core in particular.

Lenin taught that Marxism is a scientific worldview and communists differ from any political trends primarily in that they are carriers of scientific knowledge both about society and its progress, and about the universe as a whole. At the moment, Marxist theory, being the brain and soul of communists, is rising from the ruins after numerous raids by revisionists of the Trotskyist type, who not only undermined its foundations, but also crushed the political dictatorship of the working class of the USSR, betraying the Soviet people, turning them to capitalist slavery.

In the left-wing movement, which claims to lead the communist struggle, the activists and leaders are full of ignoramuses, under-students and «teteretics» of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev leaven. And it would be criminal to believe that the blooming opportunism of the left does not have as its fundamental basis a revision of the diamatics. Therefore, the struggle for the purification of Marxist methodology and philosophy is a necessary and most important link in the general struggle against opportunism and revisionism.

In addition, we must not forget the following: The most effective means of preserving the class domination of exploiters is to restrain the intellectual development of humanity in general and the majority of proletarians in particular. Religion and scholasticism have been the most reliable means of purposeful stupefaction for a long time. The scientific and technological revolution forced the oligarchy to change the form of obscurantism and intellectual disfigurement of man to a more «modern» one. The essence of purposeful stupefaction of the population is the imposition, firstly, of faith in the unknowability of society and, as a consequence, of pluralism of opinions and, secondly, of a «scientific» picture of the world, which is designed to explain the universe in the mass consciousness in idealistic ways, thereby educating the persistent illogicality of the majority’s thinking. The class tasks and the achieved results of the modern «scientific picture of the world» and the Bible are identical. In turn, the central ideas of this policy of stupefaction are the philosophical theory of modern physicists about the essence and structure of the world, which is presented in the form of the Big Bang theory, the expanding universe, space-time, and positivist principles in general. It should be noted that along with the rather broad issues that physics considers, no less harmful, but smaller theories and principles of biology and psychology are introduced into the mass consciousness according to the same recipes — the total biologization of the social and especially the mental in man and the theory of the unconscious. This is not to mention the grandiose edifice of the humanities of the bourgeois sciences, whose main task is to make every theory full of subjectivism and aversion of man from revolution, from communism. Thus, the «scientific picture of the world», along with bourgeois morality, alcohol and entertainment, is a powerful factor in the class struggle, an effective weapon of our opponent.

An effective way to combat the corrupting influence of bourgeois science is to promote the fundamental foundations of Marxism, that is, diamatics.

A. Redin
2018

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* The author means an incorrect interpretation of this formula, in which consciousness is assigned an exclusively passive, subordinate role. Creation is generated by being and is itself a part of it, but it does not follow from this that material factors reflected in a person’s head automatically form the quality of his consciousness. The correct Marxist understanding of the relationship of being and consciousness is given in Stalin’s work «Marxism and Questions of Linguistics».

1. Famous Soviet philosopher of 1930’s, former member of opportunistic “Deborin’s School”